[asterisk-dev] Corydon76

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Tuesday 02 May 2006 05:32, Koopmann, Jan-Peter wrote:
> On Sunday, April 30, 2006 11:29 PM Tilghman Lesher wrote:
> > I don't doubt that there are dozens of people for whom I have
> > closed bugs after the patches have been rejected.  However, I don't
> > think that this qualifies as a conflict, merely as a difference of
> > opinion.
>
> True. Nevertheless one could get the notion of you being particularly
> active in the negative sense. I myself had a simple feature/patch
> rejected by you. Later other people wanted to have it as well and
> another bug marshal had to "reopen" it which finally convinced you
> that the option might not hurt afterall.

Bug 6316.  While this illustrates exactly what you should do when your
patch is rejected, it also illustrates that the process really comes
down to the question of whether your patch is needed (i.e. for a bug) or
has a definite utility (for a feature).  I'd say a fair portion of the
bugs that I've closed in the bugtracker are from people who don't
realize that what they want to do can already be done, and then it's
just a matter of education.

> Please do not get me wrong: I love Asterisk! I use it and I try to
> earn money with it. Still more and more people seem to stop
> developing for Asterisk and start maintaining their own
> patches/branches. I personally use bristuffed e.g. since
> libpri/zaptel there works a lot better in Germany. I would prefer
> using the original release or have the opportunity to go to trunk and
> test  development branches but due to the poor ISDN BRI support I
> cannot. Does this mean I cannot contribute?

I wouldn't mind seeing the bristuff disclaimed and contributed back to
Asterisk, but that is obviously up to the copyright holder(s).

> > I, myself, have had dozens of patches that have been rejected
> > (mostly by Mark), but I would not consider myself to be in conflict
> > with any of those maintainers.
>
> It is perfectly valid to close bugs or reject patches. But please do
> it in a way that does not demoralize people. Asking a
> question/reporting a bug "you" (not meaning only you personally) find
> stupid, results in bad karma.

No, the only things that result in bad karma are:  1) opening bugs that
are duplicates of existing bugs, 2) opening bugs as MAJOR when they
are not in the 1.2 series, 3) opening bugs as CRASH when they do not
manifest themselves as a crash.  These are all contrary to the bug
guidelines, which are freely available on the bugtracker.  There are
other reasons as well, but they are all for actions that are agreed upon
beforehand.  I have no power at this time to create new reasons for
negative karma on the bugtracker.

> Even if later on it turns out that the 
> question was not so dumb afterall bad karma stays.

Examples?

> This 
> behaviour/system has a touch of arrogance. Simply closing issues with
> comments like "and I re-close it" does not help either.

You're right.  I apologize for being so short with Casper.  What I
really should have said is "Please discuss this with another bug
marshal, prior to reopening this bug."

> And let me be honest: In my case I was having conversations with
> other bug marshalls over IRC. When I asked why you closed it so
> rapidly while others think of it as a good idea, I received comments
> like
>
> "That's the way he is."
> "He is a bit fast/eager to close bug reports."
> "Contact me, if you have problems like this again."
>
> Does this not make you think? Why is this criticism not going to "all
> bug marshalls" but one in particular? Instead of defending yourself
> it could very much help to think about this and maybe establish a
> better way of communication. This is all I am asking for.

I will consider this in the future.

-- 
Tilghman